POP ART AND POP CULTURE in Fall 2020 (AH3065)

Aesthetic autonomy is the notion that culture is a sphere apart, with each art distinct, and it is a bad word for most of us raised on postmodernist interdisciplinarity. We tend to forget that autonomy is always provisional, always defined diacritically and situated politically, always semi. …” Hal Foster (2002) Pop Art and Pop Culture investigates the relationships between arts (painting, architecture, design, film, music…) and the mass media, with a particular focus on the 1960s. Rather than relying on practical distinctions between high and low, fine arts and applied arts, serious experiment versus entertaining commercial product, the course will consider the intersections and links between the most advanced artistic endeavors and the aesthetics of the commercial and corporate environment.